Customer Reviews

Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets: A practical guide to building a complete corporate intranet with Liferay

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

English is not the author's native language, and in this case it definitely causes some readability issues.

My biggest gripes, however, are with the content itself... or should I say lack of content. If you just stumbled into the concept of portals today and completely missed the documentation on the Liferay website then perhaps this book is for you. Otherwise, save your money and read the installation instructions from Liferay and just play with the software for ten minutes.

The interesting bits in the book are all generalized and only vaguely helpful. It's more like a product demonstration than an actual guide.

I almost gave the book two stars, but I became so frustrated trying to find anything useful in the index this morning that I chucked it into the recycle bin. On second thought, maybe I'll just donate it to the library.

This book is targeted for Liferay version 4. Do not buy this book if you've downloaded the latest Liferay release (5.2.x). Aside from the fact that this book is out of date with respect to the version, the grammar in this book made my brain ache; I couldn't read a paragraph without thinking "no professional could have written this book". I do not blame the author because he is clearly "not from 'round here"; I blame the publisher who must not be able to afford a technical editor with English grammar skills. Anyway, wait for the next version and hope that they have hired a skilled editor...

This book covers install and basic usage of Liferay.
It's a great book for beginners as it helps understanding via a "classic" example how to operate in real life Liferay portal.
Installation of liferay is depicted for Tomcat, but once you are familiar with other application server it takes no time to move from Tomcat to an other one.
Then you quickly learn how to creat users, groups, organzation and how to play with localization, add portlets and management content.
This book does not cover how to develop portlets and should be seen for admin or user who are willing to use Liferay without having to develop portlets or any other components.

I read the book Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets by Jonas Yuan. This is on of the few books that covers the spectrum of Liferay topics in a way that is readable to both the person looking to learn more about Portals, and someone who needs a tool to reference during the administration of a Liferay implementation.

In this guide, technical topics are detailed in such a way as to help even a novice navigate through them with ease. As a user of Liferay myself, this book now sits close at hand whenever I am doing something new.

I recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more or do more with Liferay. This resource will help many know what so many already do, that Liferay is one of the best Portal products available, commercial or open source!

Yuan, Jonas. Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets. Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing Ltd., 2008. Xi, 336 pp.
ISBN 13 978-1-847192-72-1, $59.99 soft cover

Reviewed by Xinsheng Chen, Cignex Technologies, Inc.

"Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets" (http://www.packtpub.com/building-liferay-portal-enterprise-intranets/book) is the first book on Liferay portal, the most popular open source portal framework. It is a detailed and comprehensive introduction to the administration of a Liferay portal. At first Dr. Jonas Yuan was supposed to write the book with two other Liferay engineers. Then the two Liferay engineers could not join the effort because of their tight work schedule -- there are only 40 software engineers in the world who are supporting this well-known portal framework. Dr. Yuan assumed the sole responsibility to write this book. He talked to consultants at Liferay and wrote the book at the same time when he was architecting a Sesame Street Project, which was based on Liferay Portal -- The book contains a lot of details from actual implementation of a real project. Dr. Juan started writing the book in January 2008. It was published in April 2008. I finished reading the book in June 2008. It is a book of great value to both Liferay fans and other Web application developers.

The book is intended for Web application designers, implementers and administrators who are interested in Liferay Portal. It illustrated in detail how to set up an enterprise intranet with Liferay. It includes step-by-step instructions on configuration of the portal. The book covers template, themes, layout, portlet, article, journal and portal -- It is worthwhile for any Web application fans to read the book.

The book is of 336 pages, including thirteen chapters. The first three chapters discuss about configuration for setting up the portal. The following nine chapters tell the reader how to configure the portal so as to take advantage of the multiple features of Liferay. The last chapter talks about integration of Liferay with Content Management Systems such as Alfresco.

Dr. Jonas exposes to the reader the various features of Liferay layer by layer. He first gives instructions on how to install the latest version of Liferay. Then he talks about setting up the most basic features like creating a user account. After that he deliberates on how to configure an internal blog. Finally the author explains how to integrate Liferay with other open source systems.

It is assumed that the reader of the book has knowledge in Java and domain. Such readers will then be introduced to wiki, Web form, blog, RSS, workflow and other features of Liferay.

The book is divided into 13 chapters. Each chapter consists of sections that focus on a topic of discussion. As expressed by Dr. Yuan in the book preface, "Liferay Portal is one of the most mature portal frameworks in the market ... Liferay is backed by a comprehensive professional services network ..."

The author has used a succinct way of illustration. He peels the corn layer by layer until the reader sees the grains. The instructions are listed in steps, accompanied by tables and screen-shots. This makes the instruction logic easy to follow.

Dr. Yuan clearly introduces the administration of a Liferay Portal. A reader can easily set up an intranet following the steps in the book. A Liferay fan can also learn a lot about portlet, layout, template and theme -- The book is like an encyclopedia on Web portal, though not that thick.

The author bases his statements on a real example portal. His instructions come from his actual practice in configuring a Liferay portal. Some paragraphs also come from his first-hand experience in developing the Sesame Street Project, which is based on Liferay.

The instructions contained in the book are detailed and neat. It has well served its purpose. However, the chapter on the integration of Liferay with Alfresco seems a little bit thin. If the author had talked more on that topic, it would be more beneficial to a reader -- Integration of two open source system is a very interesting topic.

Generally speaking, Dr. Yuan has achieved his goal in introducing Liferay to the readers in his "Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets." It is worthwhile for any Web application developer to read the book. As Liferay Portal is becoming more and more popular, it is a good idea to read this book early. This book has already aroused some interest among Web application developers. Liferay people in China have called Dr. Yuan asking him to have the book translated into Chinese. Many Chinese readers are also interested in this book.

Dr. Yuan has only focused on the Liferay Portal configuration in this book. However he talks little about project development based on Liferay. If he can write another book on implementation using Liferay plugins SDK and extension environment, that will be even better. The readers may expect the author's next book on Liferay implementation.

I recently had the chance to review the book, Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets by Jonas Yuan. A colleague of mine had recently been talking to me about Liferay and his experience using it, so I thought this was a good chance to get up to speed. Liferay is an open source portal. A free of charge JSR 286 compliant framework that has many well defined features. In my colleagues case, he has been using Liferay for some small sites he is building for friends and himself, where the cost of WebSphere Portal (even the express edition) would be a bit prohibitive for these small ventures.

I have to admit I was impressed by the features available within the Liferay Portal. Blogs, Wikis, Messaging, and Google integration, combined with the standard portal features around site definition, navigation, and security,make for a compelling package. Lightweight content management is also available along with the ability to integrate with other content management solutions. Very impressive to me was the administrative console that contained some cool memory management features. Liferay actually comes with a nice set of default portlets, so many standard features that you may need are readily available, and since it it JSR compliant the opportunity to build custom portlets is readily available and industry standardized.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give the book a 9.5, only because I think it is lacking a bit in the area of infrastructure and setup. That being said, if you are planning on working with Liferay this book is a must have for your library. It is really not touted as an infrastructure book, nor is it a development guide as far as that goes, but since the author opens the topic by discussing installation options, I was hoping for a little more discussion around installation and especially scalability options. My hunch is it probably depends upon the application server platform that you decide upon (Liferay runs on WebSphere according to the documentation).

As an overall administrative reference this book definitely covers the basics, and then some. The book is well written and an easy read. The technical jargon seems to be minimized (maybe I'm just immune) and it is written with the lay person in mind. Working through the book can also help you define your site based on the example case that is built upon over the course of the book. If you are a business user, who needs to administer a Liferay installation, then this would be your bible until you learn enough to handle things on your own.

Si estás interesado en montar una intranet y conocer a fondo esta tecnología, seguramente este es el libro que necesitas, completo y de fácil lectura. Como siempre, Packt pone a disposición de los clientes tanto la versión en papel como la versión en PDF del libro (o los dos a la vez), algo que sin duda es una idea genial para consultas, búsquedas, eBooks readers y por qué no, para los más impacientes.

En el libro, orientado a usuarios avanzados, administradores y desarrolladores, encontramos temas interesantes (incluyendo un agradecimiento especial al amigo Jorge Ferrer), entre ellos me gustaría destacar las siguientes:

* Varias formas de integrar Liferay con Alfresco.
* LDAP, SSO y OpenX.
* CMS y WCM.
* Usabilidad y funcionalidades.
* Formularios, blogs, wikis y RSS.
* Sección interesante aunque escueta sobre Liferay en la nube.